


When the Carnival Came to Town

by golden_bastet



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 17:51:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2590709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_bastet/pseuds/golden_bastet





	When the Carnival Came to Town

As a child, Bodie had always looked forward to the day the carnival came to town.

The cotton candy, the rides and the pretty girls were fine enough; a sort of enjoyment could always be found in the expected, and the expected had its uses in making one's way in the world. But it was the darker side, the freak show, that had first called to the child Bodie: the two-headed man, the snake woman, the fox boy. The boys would dare each other to enter the tent of curiosities (and fail for the most part), and the girls would run screaming and laughing when the subject of entering that tent was brought up; but Bodie would sneak back, late at night, when the midway was dark and the concessions were silenced, sneak back to crawl beneath the tent edge and stare into the horrors in the darkness.

The transition from childhood to adulthood brings many changes: deep fears meet the light of day, the definition of true horror moves from the physical to the abstract.

And yet, adult Bodie, newly returned from the horrors of the Congo and mercenary life, who had met and conquered many of a lifetime of horrors, stood before a tent which beckoned to him, dared him to enter and take his chances:

**DR. DOYLE'S THEATRE OF CURIOUS WONDERS.**

He paid his ticket and stepped inside the darkness, no longer needing to sneak in under the canvas. He was the only one inside, the interior a cool, hushed place, almost like a church. He shrugged, placed himself in the center of the front row of rough wooden benches, and waited for the tattered curtain to open.

Which, presently, it did: onto a cacophony of sound, of color and size and movement. He would have been hard put to describe what he saw, it was better stated as impressions: figures moving about in the most wondrously colored costumes, performing an intricate dance of steps to a song of unknown words, seemingly flowing off the tiny stage to surround him and engage all his senses. He could taste the sawdust, and the cotton candy of the stand down the way, and smell the explosion of cannons, and hear the roars of lions and elephants.

And in the center of the maelstrom stood a man, a whipcord-thin figure topped with auburn rings framing the face of a dirty angel. That face – which knew everything but spoke nothing, which seemed to stare right through Bodie. True, the body had its own attractions: sleek, sensual, beckoning, tempting. Bodie had always pegged himself as heterosexual, even beyond boyhood experimentation and furtive moments in the jungle; but the figure's storm-green eyes looked at him, into him, through him, challenged him, and he found he couldn't detach and draw away.

And in those eyes he read the story of a thousand suns, of sand and wind and rain, the hardest trek and the end of a difficult day; the tale of a thousand nights, nothing but stars above at the welcoming refuge of a small oasis. Of every day of hope, and despair, and boredom, and excitement; of living, not just surviving. And the promise of knowledge, of sharing it with someone who knew and would be more than up to the challenge, who would match Bodie point by point and who could, _would_ , watch over Bodie as well as Bodie would watch over him.

A hand extended; the challenge was offered. Bodie accepted.

**************

As always, the day came that the carnival packed up and left town.

The unclaimed milk bottles beside Bodie's door were eventually removed.


End file.
